About the Shuck Plugin ====================== Author: Angus McIntyre Mail: angus@pobox.com WWW: http://pobox.com/~angus/ Introduction ------------ Shuck Plugin is a Contextual Menu Manager plug-in for MacOS. It is intended to allow MacPerl programmers to perform fast keyword lookups using the Shuck POD documentation viewer. With the plug-in installed, you can find documentation for any Perl keyword by double-clicking the keyword to select it, then control-clicking to summon up a contextual menu and choosing the Shuck item from the menu. Shuck will be started (if necessary) and the documentation for the keyword (if any) will be displayed. The plugin should work in any CMM-aware text-editing application; it has been tested successfully in BBEdit, SimpleText, the MacPerl text editor and even in Shuck itself. To use this you will need a PowerPC computer running MacOS 8, MacPerl (which is available from ) and the SOMObjectsª for MacOS extension, which should be installed by default in most MacOS 8 installations. Install the plug-in as you would any other Contextual Menu plug-in; drag it to the System Folder, let go, and let the System place it in the Contextual Menu Items folder. You will need to restart to make the plug-in available. Important Disclaimer -------------------- This is alpha software. If you don't know what that means, you shouldn't be running it. If you do know what that means, go ahead and use it at your own risk. The software was written in less than a day by someone whose primary programming language is decidedly *not* C++. It has been tested very briefly on a single machine (a PowerMac 7600/120 running MacOS 8), and while it appears to work, there is a reasonably high probability that the software may contain bugs which, at the very least, could cause system crashes. 'At your own risk' means what it says. I accept no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential damage that may be done by your use of this software or by your inability to use it. You should expect it to behave badly and perhaps, if you're lucky, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Don't use the software for any mission-critical applications. It should not be used to control nuclear power plants, life support equipment or passenger aircraft, or for any other application in which failure of the software could have serious consequences. Copyright --------- This software is free for individual use. You may freely distribute unmodified copies accompanied by this notice. You may not distribute modified copies or charge for the copies you distribute, except by prior arrangement. The author retains copyright of the software. Acknowledgements ---------------- Shuck Plugin is based on the example ContextTypeCMPlugin written by Guy Fullerton and distributed as part of Apple's Contextual Menus SDK. Some code is also borrowed from examples in Symantec's Think Reference and from Andrew Nemeth's AppLauncher demonstration application. Shuck Plugin was developed using MetroWerks CodeWarrior Pro 2 and Barebones BBEdit 4.5 ("It may not suck, Rich, but at least now it can Shuck!"). Most of the magic is, of course, done by the Shuck application itself, written by the terrifyingly-talented Matthias Neeracher. Music by The Oyster Band, Jethro Tull and R.E.M. contributed to the development of this software. Some cheese, tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches were also somehow involved. Version history --------------- 14.12.97 v0.1a - written, debugged(?) and released, all in a day